Interview with Kelly More

Sean C. Davis: [00:00:00] Welcome to code sandwich hour, a certified fresh event where we talk code and sandwiches, and it takes about an hour. This week’s special guest is Kelly Moore developer advocate at ANSYS. Welcome to the show, Kelly, thanks, John excited. Really I’m excited for you to be here as well. I think this is gonna be a really fun show.

And before we introduce the show or anything like that, I like to ask the most important question first, so important that it comes before the intro. And that is what is the best sandwich.

Kelly More: The best sandwich is fried green tomato sandwich on Texas toast bread with garlicy, kale, and eggplant smoked eggplant Mayo.

Sean C. Davis: Holy smokes. That’s that’s like that is very prescriptive. I love [00:01:00] that. Is, does the sandwich have a name or is this just a thing that you created?

Kelly More: It’s called a Florida fried green tomato sandwich. It’s at a restaurants called market on south in such a Florida. It’s like a vegan restaurant and they have a lot of different vegan sandwiches.

Mostly processed food sandwiches, like the fake chicken. But I try to stay away from the processed food stuff. And this was like one of the freshest sandwiches that they have and I tried it and completely hooked actually had it yesterday. Amazing.

Sean C. Davis: Amazing. Okay. And so the Texas, I feel like when I’ve had Texas toast it’s just been from like a box that says Texas toast.

And I don’t know if this is official or real or authentic or anything. So can you describe what is what’s the official. Definition of it. What has to be what are the qualities that have to exist for you to consider the bread? Texas toast?

Kelly More: That’s a good question. I have no idea.

I just okay. Yeah. I looked at the ingredients in the menu. I’m like, okay. So I guess that’s what Texas toast is, but essentially it just looks like [00:02:00] a white bread toasted with some kind of smoked Paka on top

Sean C. Davis: of it. Oh, okay. Interesting. I feel like when I’ve had it, it’s been more, more like soaked in garlicy butter or something like that.

And then baked. Yeah. I don’t know. That might not be like, that might not be the traditional Texas dose. I don’t know. I should look this up now. Yeah. Could be. But I don’t that’s, that is a really interesting and unique sandwich. It sounds salty and delicious, but also fresh at the same time.

Kelly More: Yeah, it’s really good. If you and Brian are ever in central Florida, let me know and I’ll get you. Florida fried green tomato sandwiches.

Sean C. Davis: Now we’re gonna have to come up with an excuse to come down there. Yes, that sounds great. okay. Now that I am sufficiently hungry immediately after lunchtime, I feel like we’ll, let’s go into the rest of the show so I can stay distracted from this hunger.

So for those of you who are watching or listening at home, please feel free [00:03:00] to, I suppose you could use this time to go make a sandwich while we’re introducing this show and then you don’t you can yeah. Just be entertained and also not left so hungry anyways. So as usual, this show is the rest of the show will be a series of three segments.

Each has its own purpose and theme catered to our guests. Now, usually I. Have been a little goofy and made the names of these segments more pun. But today Kelly is fluent in Portuguese and I thought it would be a really interesting and selfishly a learning exercise for me to learn how to count in Portuguese.

So that’s where we’re gonna keep our names really simple. And we’re just gonna, we’re gonna learn how to begin counting in portugese with our sections today. Okay. And you’re gonna have to help me cuz I I’m very bad at everything that isn’t English. So this will be a good learning exercise.

Awesome. Okay. So for those of you listening into the recording, [00:04:00] just noting that these shows are recorded live during the first and third Thursdays of each month at 1:00 PM Eastern standard time in the United States, which is 5:00 PM. GMT, the live shows are then later syndicated on cfe.dev and YouTube and video format, or also in audio format, wherever you prefer to get your podcast.

And so with that, I feel like I’m ready to get started. What about you, Kelly? Likewise. Okay. Let’s dig into it. So first segment how do we say, how do we say one in portugese? Okay. Okay. What, and maybe you’ll have to quiz me at the end to make sure that I am retaining this knowledge okay. So with this first segment, Usually we spend this time exploring our guests early days and how they got started in the tech industry.

And those stories are I find those stories really interesting because people can come from all sorts of different backgrounds. And as I was looking through your your work experience, which [00:05:00] tend to try to get some inspiration on what are some topics that we could really focus on, especially in these early days.

And I was immediately so overwhelmed that like within less than five years, you’ve gone from HR to marketing to tech team, lead to tech writer, to tech evangelist, to data scientists, to engineer, to dev advocate and on paper, it feels like it’s such a dynamic. Dynamic career, just jam packed into a few short years.

And so because of that, I wanted to start maybe a little bit earlier than we usually would. And so I’m hoping you can kick us off by telling us about your schooling and your motivation for starting your career in the HR space.

Kelly More: Sure. That’s interesting. Okay. So first I wanna say that the reason why my LinkedIn probably looks that way is because I held multiple roles simultaneously, which is, ah, okay.

Okay. Yeah. It’s not something that you see a lot. Yeah, and I just did that because[00:06:00] when I was in sophomore engineering bootcamp I heard the excuse that recruiters gave the alumni. Oh, we don’t wanna hire you because you don’t have any experience. So I told myself I’m just gonna get experience right now.

so I started doing things like technical writing and things of that nature. But the HR stuff that was before I broke into tech I had no technical experience at that time. And then my executive director promoted me to head of marketing at company head of marketing communications, which was a job that I was really bad at.

I’m really bad at marketing . But the reason why I broke into tech is I was sitting at a YC YC startup school lecture in 2018 back when back when they still did it in person. And I think it was Paul Graham that was lecturing that day. And he had said something along the lines of if you are in this.

Classroom. And you are a non-technical founder building a technical [00:07:00] company. Your job for the first year is to get your technical founder coffee. And I’m like, I’m not doing that. I’m not getting anyone coffee. I don’t even do coffee. So I’m like, okay. So I guess it’s time to learn how to code. And it’s something that had been in the back of my mind quite often, just working at startups and noticing that if you are not a developer or you can’t code and at any type of level, your contributions are sometimes limited.

So I’m like, okay, I need to break into tech. So I went to software engineering school and then started freelancing while I was a student. I didn’t wait for a company to, to give me permission to, be a software engineer or any adjacent roles set that. And just started freelancing as a technical writer and then also started freelancing in my own community.

So with I remember I had made a dentist appointment and I went on the website and I saw that my dentist website was super archaic. It was [00:08:00] probably just H method . So what I did was I revamped her website and after my cleaning, I pulled out my iPad and I showed her what I had built and I said, Hey, I’m about to graduate.

I I noticed that maybe you need a new website. I built this for you. Could you maybe, give me your thoughts on it. And if you like it, maybe pay me what it’s worth that way I can just splash this on my resume so I can, just have the experience to talk about an interview. Sure. No problem.

and that’s how I got my little experiences. Yeah. And then after that just started working at career karma part-time while I was still studying. Of course I did some technical writing there. And then when I graduated I got my first full-time little dev job as a developer advocate of FinTech company.

But I didn’t wanna leave career karma because I just loved the culture and I love the founders they’re super. [00:09:00]

Sean C. Davis: And what did career karma do? What was, what were they all about?

Kelly More: Yeah essentially they help marginalized people break into tech, but they helped everyone break into tech.

Okay. Yeah. And they, there are career coach coaches that help the community decide like what flavor tech they want to break into, whether that’s us design, data science software engineering, even tech sales so all these different flavor of tech jobs and yes, I was doing tech writing for them.

And then when I got my full-time job at a and tech company at the Walla they still needed help and they needed help in terms of like evangelism. I got promoted to that tech evangelism role where I was, hosting live rooms and doing interviews with people from Goldman and Sachs and Google, like sophomore engineers from Google Netflix, et cetera.

And in hopes of motivating the community and helping them [00:10:00] decide like what track they, they wanna focus on super rewarding. I loved working. But yeah from there and please stop me if I’m rambling.

Sean C. Davis: well no, this is great, but yeah let’s let’s pause there and back up a little bit, and then we’ll fast forward.

So I’m curious you said you had you didn’t like the marketing role at the first company you were working with. And and you had heard a talk and that was like changing your mind. Is that, was that around the time you decided to go into tech? Was it specifically because you didn’t like marketing and you what was the what was the thing that kind of pushed you over the edge of, Hey, I really want to do this thing.

Kelly More: Yeah, I think it was the fact that I just wanted a more I just wanted a job that, that challeng challenged me a bit more. And also that made me feel like I, I was making an impact, not just inside the company, but outside of it as well. If that makes sense, like with building a product that other people are going to [00:11:00] use.

Sean C. Davis: Okay. Something. So do you feel like it’s more about to you? It’s more about the thing that you’re representing versus the role. And I’ll the reason I ask that is because there’s. the dev advocacy or relations, or, lots of terms in this space. And it’s this huge umbrella that means something different at every organization.

And in some cases you’re working really tightly with with the engineering team and in other organizations, it’s basically a function of marketing and I’m in a smaller organization and I’m essentially doing both of those things. . And so you said you really didn’t like marketing, but you also then really gravitated towards this tech evangelism this sort of like developer advocate role.

And so do you feel like it’s, there’s a line there that you cross that feels better or more about the thing that you’re representing?

Kelly More: I think I just fell into it because I had so much technical writing and content creation experience. Oh, okay. Yeah.[00:12:00] But. Yeah. I feel like the reason why I was bad at that marketing job is because I just, I didn’t know what I honestly did not know what to do.

Like I didn’t know what I was doing. Like my background at the time was just in HR and and like writing here and there I feel like I’m a really good writer. That’s one of my strengths. And the executive directors saw that and was just, okay, let me put you here. Cause I need you to do this.

Yes. And maybe I did do a good job, but I didn’t feel like I was doing a good job if

Sean C. Davis: that makes any sense. Yes, absolutely. And also I have a, an odd parallel to that story of you’re good at writing, do this thing. I, I was I was co-oping or interning at a construction management company when I was in college and I was studying civil engineering.

So I was on that path to being more of an engineer or a civil engineer, construction manager. And this is in [00:13:00] 2008, 2009. Like when the economy tanked is the housing crisis and all that the EV everybody reduced a lot of those internships just disappeared. And mine was going to my, my job site was, it was shut down or I wasn’t gonna be able to be in the field anymore.

But one of the other, I think it was the head of marketing had come across my resume and was like, Ooh, here’s this goofy engineer who says he likes to write, so we’re gonna put him in marketing. And then that was a weird thing that kind of got the. The ball rolling for me.

And I got just I was like at this marketing, definitely not for me, not very good at it, but the foundation, I still feel like of the writing and the positioning and all of that. I still continue to take throughout my career. So I think that’s so that’s such an interesting parallel for sure.

Kelly More: Yeah. I think if you bring this up with any person in depth, they’ll probably have the same answer yeah. Like a similar experience. Yeah, I

Sean C. Davis: think so. I think so. Okay. So tell [00:14:00] us about the, okay. So you decide, you want to go you want, you wanted to be challenged marketing doesn’t feel right.

How did you decide to go into this boot camp

Kelly More: for the software engineering? Yes. Yep. Yeah. So I, okay. So I was doing the YC startup school and the bootcamp that I chose was like backed by YC and that’s how I found out about them. And they were doing the the ISA at the time and my goal.

So excuse me, I was limiting overseas before I did this, I did startup school. And my goal when I came back to the United States was to become debt free and that wasn’t gonna happen if I had to go back to university. When I heard about the ISA, which stands for income sharing agreement, and it’s an ISA is different for every program and for every school, but essentially I’ll share my, what my contract says.

So essentially it says if, and when Kelly lands a job as a software [00:15:00] engineer or similar Kelly will pay 17% of her income of her gross income. If she’s making at least 50 K gross yearly for two years or up until she pays $30,000. So there’s a cap. So I’m like, okay, that’s a good deal because I’m not gonna take out any P loans.

And it’s like almost a job guarantee. So I’m definitely gonna get like a job. The chances are high in the industry. And I have that support from the school helping me do that as well. So that’s how I chose that bootcamp. It was because of the ISA and because it was a already in the community that I was that I was in.

Sean C. Davis: Okay. That’s I love hearing that story cuz I, I feel like I come. The negative stories with ISAs more frequently that there and there are certainly issues with them, but I love hearing that that was the thing you were like, no, this makes this approachable and helps to get into the industry.[00:16:00]

Okay. So that’s that’s yeah that’s exciting. And that’s okay. So that now we’re at the beginning of your tech adventure. I feel like let’s yeah, let’s transition into our second segment. So how do we say two in Portuguese?

Kelly More: Doce

Sean C. Davis: Doche

Kelly More: Doce.

Sean C. Davis: Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. And in this segment we’re gonna spend the, this is usually the longer one that I like to talk more about what you’re doing today and and yeah.

And where your interests have been lately in, in tech. And so I know we stopped where. you have transitioned and just gotten into software engineering. I wanna come back and fill in some of those gaps, but thought it would be interesting if we fast forward and jump all the way to today.

So if you need, if you feel like you need to set the context and fill in some of the history that’s that’s totally fine, but just really curious what are you doing today? I know you’re in between roles, so like what what were you doing and what are you gonna be doing at ANSYS as well?

Yeah [00:17:00] before I was doing Dr. Role at a computer vision startup, so just specializing in, in CV there right now, I’m just enjoying my last week of vacation until I start my new role at ANSYS. I start on the 13th, but I’m probably gonna start working starting next week just for myself, just so I can get mental with the para to hit the ground running.

When. My official start date comes along and yeah. So at ANSYS essentially what it is, it’s they specialize in simulations and, in DevRel, we are very accustomed to so we, we have a product that was built by developers and endeavor. We are essentially teaching other developers how to use that product.

Yep. What I love about ANSYS is that sure the simulation software was built by developers, but it’s not just for developers to use. It’s not only for software engineers, it’s for all engineers and you [00:18:00] with a civil engineering background could probably appreciate this. So there are aerospace engineers that are gonna be using it mechanical engineers and even physicists.

Or use simulation software. So I’m just very happy. I’m very excited to be around like all these smart people. I’m gonna be learning a lot of things. Yeah, so really excited about that. And my direct manager has a lot of engineering experience as well. He worked at IBM used to be a CTO.

And it used to be an endeavor as well, like a, as an evangelist. So very excited to, to learn everything I can from

from him. But I know you haven’t started yet, but can you maybe give like an broad strokes, an overview of what is simulation software for folks who might not have any idea about the space?

Yeah,

absolutely. So have you ever used [00:19:00] Postma before. postman. Yes, . Okay. So imagine a product like postman that you can instead of APIs, instead of the API URL it’s just like Python code snippets and okay. You can also you also have a bit visualizations to go with it, right? So let’s say for example, I’m a mechanical engineer and I’m building a flywheel, which is essentially a mechanical device that stores energy as it, it rotates.

I’m gonna wanna build a simulation of that design and that idea before I cut any piece of steel in order to not only save me time, but also money and material. So yeah, so that’s what the simulation that’s like the problem that the simulation solve.

interesting. So is with with the product you’re gonna be working on, is the, in, in your example, is [00:20:00] the mechanical engineer writing the Python code, then

Kelly More: it doesn’t he or she can but more the developer on a team would be helping him.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, but absolutely if a mechanical engineer wants to run the Python scripts along with the, the we have our own library called P ANSYS then for sure. And I’m really excited to, to make that process super easy for whoever it is that wants to build that simulation.

So I was talking to my my direct hire, Chris and he, like we were talking about now nowadays we have like citizen, sophomore engineers sophomore engineers who didn’t need to, do the CS programming university to get their jobs. We have data analysts and data scientists that, went through the same or similar route like what we want to see and what I would love to see as well is like citizen simulators.

So you have [00:21:00] this simulation product, you wanna build a simulation for whatever mechanical engineering or aerospace engineering product that you are trying to build. You can go build it even a university or a high school level, like for a science project, you wanna build something and you wanna see how it’s gonna look like, or you wanna see what problems in the nitty gritty physics will.

Will show up simulate it first, build a simulation of it first before you, you go build it.

Sean C. Davis: So if you’re going to do that, like if it’s even if it’s even a high school kid or person trying to simulate some problem that they’ve been giving given you still have to have, I suppose you have to have some understanding or design on what the thing actually is ahead of time, for sure.

Yeah. So is that can that just be this maybe a silly question, but can that thing be dreamed up during the process of writing the simulation? Or is it pretty standard to always [00:22:00] go through some process, whether it’s like drawing in CAD or can you even just sketch on a paper?

Like what’s the step right before the simulation process begins?

Kelly More: Yeah, I suppose you can’t do that, especially if you are going through. Tutorial. And you just wanna substitute it for a similar design. That’s maybe not the exact design that the tutorial was is giving you.

Sean C. Davis: Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Interesting. So I thought it would be, I thought it’d be interesting to, to to jump all the way to the present because it’s connected to what we were talking about when you transition, but also there’s this like space in the middle where it looks like you, you started studying data science, quite a bit more.

And so can you tell us about that point in your career? What got you into more of the data space and maybe away from the software engineering a little bit.

Kelly More: Yeah I actually I’m still volunteering at correlation one as a community manager for them and helping, okay. Yeah.

The alumni and students land their first theater [00:23:00] roles, but. I excuse me. So when I was at Dowa doing developer advocacy there and then working part-time at career karma as a tech evangelist, would I, so like we mentioned before, is, looks, it’s a Dain that looks different depending on the industry that the company is in, as well as like the stage the company is in.

It looks different company to company. What, so what happened at what I, what happened at my first dev overall job is that I loved it. It was great, but I was I was only coding like 30% of the time in a good quarter. So I’m like, like I had that to still want to code and, I got, I was getting a little bit bored and I didn’t necessarily wanna leave.

I’m like, okay, I’m I wanna learn something new. What can I learn? And I just fell into data science and a friend of mine was working at correlation one as a TA. And he said I work at this company and it’s difficult to get into, but if you get in, you won’t have to pay tuition cuz it’s free.

The like hedge funds pay for it and [00:24:00] other companies sponsor your seat. So I’m like, okay, I’ll apply. And then I got accepted, which was awesome. So I just started doing that. And I did it part-time while still working full-time at my dad role and I was actually, there was a moment while I was juggling all three, Dewal one and career karma a lot.

Yeah. And then I had to let career karma go because it got to the point where I was about to like I start, I had to start building. My, my project for Johnson and Johnson which was one of the partner companies of for program. So I’m like, okay, this is serious. I have to focus more.

Sean C. Davis: yeah. But did you, did that did that lead to a different job or did that did you then work it into your current job or yeah. How did that how did that, that, that process work its way back into your life and

Kelly More: career? Yeah, I did both. But both of those things, I made it work in my, in the role that I had at the time.

So for example I saw [00:25:00] that our support team was asked, like we had questions being asked like the same questions at every single day. But by different people, what I did was I took that data. From the slack channel. I compartmentalized it. I dunno if I said that or would write, remember English is like my third language so I sectioned it out to different topics.

Okay. This is a topic about API. This is like a, just a general technical concept topic, et cetera. And then built like a internal tech sessions around those frequently asked topics. And then after that a month after that, after the tech sessions, I took the data again, and I compared it to the data that I had gathered before the tech sessions.

And I think FAQs where questions in general had decreased like 87%, like 87% decreased. Okay. Questions. Which was awesome. And then, [00:26:00] yeah, and. And our CT or sorry, our vice president of engineering was pretty astounded by that result when we shared with him in one of the meetings.

So yeah, I did, I got creative and in using it internally in my own role and interesting, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it did lead me to the role that I landed after that, which was in endeavor, but in computer vision, like specializing in computer vision, because it was it’s essentially you are, tinkering around with Google co lab notebooks or Jupyter notebooks.

And for those who dunno what that is, you can think of a Jupyter notebook as it’s if I had to explain it to, it’s like a read me dot MB file, where you can run code as well as write text. And you usually do it in Python. Okay, so you’re tinker around and in those notebooks, and you’re also like building full stack applications around a computer vision model.[00:27:00]

Like you, it’s like beneficial to have both skills, both the data science and the software engineering. So I’m like, yes, I can use both.

Sean C. Davis: interesting. And so yeah, compu computer vision, that’s in the, is that in the AI space? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah.

What what kind of interesting things were happening with within your computer vision space?

Kelly More: There are a lot of interesting things. I feel like CV is a very enchanting technology. Excuse me. One thing that I think I’m pretty proud of, sorry. Gimme one

Sean C. Davis: second for, oh, you’re good.

Kelly More: I think one of the things that I’m most proud of is so at correlation one, when I was still a fellow there which by the way, like C one is probably the best I got the best education at out of any education that I’ve ever gotten. Dr. Tim net guru who was a, [00:28:00] she’s a research scientist, a data scientist.

And she worked at Google doing AI research and excuse me, she is, she’s very big at solving the problem of algorithmic bias and specifically NCD models. So sh when she came in and did a lecture about it, a guest lecture about it, and I was totally mind blown. And she went in and spoke about how the bias isn’t only.

In humans it’s in like everyday objects. Like she, she pulled out an off the shelf model that was supposed to be able to identify hand soap, but it was only identifying like the bar soap version of hand soap as hand soap and then the liquid version. It didn’t recognize that as soap at all, because it wasn’t trying to recognize that as hand soap.

And also on top of that, when you fed it bar soap from a foreign country, like Nepal, it didn’t recognize it EST. So at all, I recognize it as food, you think? [00:29:00] Interesting. Yeah. Super interesting. So I’m like, okay. And yeah, so I, I dug into that and like I was I, excuse me, I did a rock for scissors CV model, and I tried to, make it as unbiased as I could.

And I loved that whole process because it, it just exposed. Like how you can make something unintentionally biased and the reverse, like you, I just learned a lot through that project. And then I also went to an event that Carnegie Mellon and emeritas hosted to get students, to sign up for some of the Carnegie Mellon programs.

And I that’s what I did, my, my talk on was that project and combating, the biases that you see and like how you can combat it. So you essentially just need a more diverse data set and you, of course, you need to label it correctly. And then doing things like active learning.

So for example, just using that soap CV model Hey if this, if [00:30:00] the model isn’t recognizing this. Bar slope from Nepal as hand. So then I actively, I act like I, I intent I’m intentionally the human in the loop taking that picture, uploading it to the data, set, retraining it and redeploying it.

And in order to help the model, okay. That this too is hand soap.

Sean C. Davis: Gotcha. Okay. I think that’s so interesting and I love the concept of unintentional bias. That’s just, that’s such a I don’t know. There’s so much to study in that space. Do you feel like there’s, can you remember a time when you.

Yeah. Was there a moment that was particularly memorable where you were introducing bias, but you had no idea like it totally. Whether someone helped you discover it or eventually you discovered it and you’re like why was I doing that thing? Or just I don’t know. Yeah.

Some epiphany on, on a specific project,

Kelly More: on a specific project[00:31:00] the rock paper, scissor ones comes to mind again, because I have only trained it with me with me during the rock paper, scissors, hand gesture. But and I took pictures right here in my office. But when I, launched the model and had someone else. Play with it.

It didn’t recognize anything. One because so the concept of null images are, is very important. So what null images are training is training or model to do is it’s training a model to, to recognize that this is not what it’s supposed to be looking for. Yep. So one of my bosses at the job was launch the model and his office.

I think he was at a WeWork or a co-working space. It had three light bulbs in the ceiling that kind of look like you could easily fool a CV model to recognize it as scissors, like the scissors, hand gesture because of the three, three points. Cause it was, ah, okay. Okay. So it, it was in that shape and it [00:32:00] recognized that as scissors, because it didn’t happen images of things.

Of things like that things saying, Hey, this is not scissors. Only this is, oh,

Sean C. Davis: like you have to find things that are of a similar shape and structure, but that are wrong. Basically you have to teach it. What is wrong as much as you do different ways of being right. That’s right.

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. What this is like blowing my mind. This is it such a as like a fascinating space that I’ve spent zero time in, very

Kelly More: enhancing, very enhancing. And then also there’s and it was just me and then I eventually got a girl fed to, to take pictures and send it to me so I could upload it to the model.

But then when a male coworkers would throughout their hands it would still the the metrics for it. It wasn’t very high. So for example if you would’ve thrown up a paper, hand gesture maybe it would’ve been. Like, oh I’m 40% sure that this is paper. And that’s because men have larger hands than women.

So it’s oh, [00:33:00] maybe this isn’t, maybe this isn’t the paper. Maybe this is something else. Huh?

Sean C. Davis: So that is, wow. Yeah. So you have something that sounds so simple. I’m going to teach this I’m going or build this CV model out of three hand gestures. Turns out to be this whole big thing, because you have to account for so many different variables in the process.

Kelly More: Yeah. And then imagine if you’re a game developer trying to develop a rock versus a game using computer vision. So who’s gonna be your users kids also. So you need to train your model to detect these tiny little hands, the rock, hand gesture.

Sean C. Davis: Do you feel like any. Is any part of this the current state of maturity of these these platforms or is it like is this always going to be a thing?

If you’re always gonna have to count for lights in the background, in different sized hands, if you were to build this or are the it’s like the platform or the foundation on which [00:34:00] you build these programs, are they getting better to the point where you have to do less or worry less about bias?

Kelly More: That’s a really good question. It’s difficult for me to answer that because what you can do you can always train your model from a checkpoint. And that, that could be like a like from cocoa, from a cocoa checkpoint, which is like a pre-train model. That’s pre-trained to recognize a bunch of things.

Okay. So like you can train your own model and then train it from using that checkpoint. However, and I’m not saying that the cocoa that this is the faculty cocoa, I’m not sure. But like how accurate is that model? How accurately was that model trained to, to detect the object that you’re trying to detect?

Let’s say it’s cars like it. What kind of data is in there? Is it only Mercedes? Is it only Teslas? Is it like trucks as well? Does that make sense? , yeah, it does get complicated.

Sean C. Davis: That would be like, it’s like a building a if you’re [00:35:00] gonna build a web it’s like a template for a website, you have a starting point and the website already has some of these pieces and you can build on top of those, essentially something like.

Kelly More: That’s a really good analogy. Yeah. That would be, this would be also a really good question for, and I an AI researcher, like Dr. she would definitely have a lot, a better answer than I just gave. But yeah, those are my thoughts based on my experiences, building CP models of that fascinating

Sean C. Davis: Okay we’ve got we have a few minutes left, so let’s transition into our third and final segment, which is called, how do we say three?

okay. All. But I feel like I’m, this is the beginning now. Now I feel like I’ve gotta go learn Portuguese, right? This is, I have the foundation. No, that’s all right. Okay, so this sec this segment, we tend to just do short short questions with short answers. I say tend to, because some [00:36:00] of my questions that I keep coming back to are becoming infamous and are getting longer.

Feel free to pass on any of these and, give quick answers or go more into depth if you want. All right. Ready? Yes. Okay. Let’s do it. Question number one. I feel like you touched on this. Maybe you have a different answer. I’ll just ask it. What has been your biggest win in your career so far?

Kelly More: Oh, that’s a difficult question.

man. I don’t know

it is actually not a technical answer at all. I would just say I think my biggest line is be like being able to understand like when I am feeling in some type of imposter syndrome, that this is a good thing, because it means that I’m about to [00:37:00] level up even more in, in whatever it is that I’m practicing, whether that’s in, in software engineering or in data science.

I’m about to gain more skills. I feel like when I’m feeling imposter syndrome it’s a good signal that I’m about to learn something that I’m scared to learn because I’m the newest person in the room.

Sean C. Davis: . That is such a good answer. That’s okay. You, I don’t know. You’ve art.

You just articulated something that I feel like I’ve been like trying to reason with over, over the last year or so, like shifting in totally different job is totally different space. And I’m like, wow, I’m with these amazing people all the day. Am I every day, all day am I really supposed to be here?

And then eventually it just starts to click and I’m like, okay. Yep. Now I can fire it your level. And this is, yeah. Things are happening, but you’re, I hadn’t really, I hadn’t been mindful enough to put it into those terms, but that’s a great way, like being mindful that[00:38:00] not getting overwhelmed with the imposter syndrome, but actually using that as motivation to keep going.

Kelly More: Yeah. It’s like a signal that, okay, this is good. And you’re supposed to be here. You’re about to level up. Yes.

Sean C. Davis: That’s so great. Okay. Number two, what’s the what, so you’ve done a lot of technical writing and as somebody who only knows a single language, you, we talked before the show, and you said you can speak 3.5 languages.

What is the hardest part about being a or maybe is it difficult? But yeah, what I’ll just say. What’s the hardest part about writing when you’re fluent in multiple languages

or is it not hard? Do you not even think about it? You’re just like, this is English. I know what I’m doing. Let’s do it.

Kelly More: Yeah, pretty much. I I think I, I’ve only, the only time I needed to write in a language other than English was when when I was volunteering at brave, like translating.

Translating documentation [00:39:00] from English to Portuguese, but that was already written for me. I just needed to translate it.

Sean C. Davis: Oh, okay. So you’re when you’re in writing mode, you’re just default English. That’s default English. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay.

Kelly More: English is also my strongest language. Like even though it’s my third language, I speak it better than any other language.

And I also have an American accent in every language.

Sean C. Davis: okay. Okay. So it’s yeah, that, I guess that, that makes sense if you’ve got whether it’s a go-to writing language or your dominant language that you’re probably not. Or maybe it doesn’t. Yeah. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Even if you’re writing in multiple languages, you’re just, you get in the zone and I guess since we’re on the subject, is it like, does that translate to to speaking as well?

Do you, or you just get your mind into this is the language we’re. Conversing in. And so you’re not really thinking about

Kelly More: that. No, it takes time. It takes a few minutes for it, to, for it to click. So like at first I’ll probably be [00:40:00] mixing, if it’s Spanish, I’ll be mixing Spanish in English a lot until I’m comfortable enough to not mix it anymore.

Sean C. Davis: gotcha. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Number three. So I know you’ve spent most of your life in the states, but curious having come from or yeah, come from Brazil. What is something that most people might not know about Brazil?

Kelly More: That’s a good question.

Maybe that I don’t know. I feel and this is something that I learned recently. The carnival in Brazil is probably like the craziest party. Anyone will ever go to and the floats that they do is it’s actually for a specific Samba school. I didn’t know that I thought it was just like random people partying and showing off what they built that year.

Yeah. And then who, whoever has the best float and the best design and the best dances will, would win [00:41:00] that the competition this whole time. I just thought it was like a wild, crazy party that happens every February, but it’s an actual competition that people take very seriously.

Sean C. Davis: okay. And so it’s all, does it all happen in one location? Is it all in.

Kelly More: I think, yeah. I think it’s all in Rio. Yeah.

Sean C. Davis: Interesting. And it’s all about, it’s a one school competition.

Kelly More: Yeah. It’s a bunch of schools competing against each other. Oh. A bunch of schools. Okay.

Yeah. It’s like a, it’s a kind of dance. It’s like salsa, but it’s not, it’s so bys, like it’s like a type of dance from Brazil.

Sean C. Davis: Okay. Interesting. I had no idea.

Kelly More: Amazing. Yeah. Either until recently.

Sean C. Davis: Okay next one might be tough because you are, you’re already in a transition state and moving to ANSYS, you’ve gone back to, you’ve done these different. Boot camps are going back to some form of school and [00:42:00] made a lot of changes. And so I’m saying bold prediction.

We’re asking, what’s your next career move? Or maybe what do you think you go back to school for next? Or do you feel like you found something that you’re gonna stay at? With, for a while?

Kelly More: Yeah, I’m already in school again. I’m doing oh great. I’m doing the before growth product and engineering courses just to like for continuous improvement, just learning, like building on what I already know and learning more about leadership and growth metrics and things of that nature and product as well.

And the product manage management process, which I actually don’t know a lot about so excited to learn stuff there. I’m B I’m in the middle of building my own product as well with a co-founder

Sean C. Davis: Oh, exciting. Yeah.

Kelly More: And it’s around NLP, which now for natural language processing and it’s like a branch of AI.

Yeah. And it’s [00:43:00] still in its very early stages, but it’s just like a little side project that we’re working on. And yeah, I feel like it’s time to, to build something and put it out there as my own product, or as our own product myself and my co-founder like we, we have the skills and we have the connections, so why not?

Let’s see what happens.

Sean C. Davis: And so that, that kind of seems like it falls in line with the courses you’re taking, cuz it’s kinda helping round you out in the whole, like everything you need to make a product successful more or less. Yeah,

Kelly More: exactly. And I’m doing start school again? This month, I think, right?

We’re in June. Yes. We’re in June.

Sean C. Davis: okay. Okay. Oh, great. I love that. You’re always like gotta, yeah, gotta keep learning. Get more. Rounded go deeper. This is this is great. Okay. Okay. Number five. So to set this one up I feel like I should say that I, you mentioned some volunteer work early on that kind of helped get you started.

[00:44:00] And I did a similar sort of thing. I feel like that’s a great way to get started, give back to community or friends or whatever that might be. And and yeah they get something out of it, but you get something potentially more valuable . But I’ve also noticed that you’ve worked with some nonprofits throughout your career and continued be to volunteer in different ways.

And I think that there’s like a common, yeah, I’m trying to think of the best way to set this up. I feel like there’s this there’s a lot of it’s really big in our industry to contribute to open source and it, and yeah. That in a way gets I don’t know if it’s passed off, but it’s like it’s a form of giving back to a community.

If you are, I think in it’s most pure state that is true. I know there are different versions of open source today where some people are working out in the open, but it’s a company sponsored or what have you but I think in the purest open source sense that that sense of community and giving back is true there.

Okay. So [00:45:00] setting. Using that to set it up. Two part question is in part number one is in giving back or volunteering your time. What has been the most rewarding experience and part number two is what would you say to convince newer developers or even maybe seasoned developers?

What they should be doing to give back and maybe not even to their development communities, but like their human or physical communities as well.

Kelly More: Sure. Oh, really good questions. So for the first one I think the most rewarding one is the one that I’m currently doing which is community management at correlation one.

So they’re, I’m essentially just helping the students and alumni land, their first data job, data jobs either as data analysts data scientists, or like anything adjacent to that. And I’m doing like resume reviews, LinkedIn reviews like practicing [00:46:00] interview, practicing for interviews coming up with project ideas, to put on a data fol which is like a portfolio, but for data science related projects.

So that’s really rewarding. And it also helps it is also very humbling, cuz like my mind is always go you’re not working fast enough. You need to be doing like three things at once. Where at when I’m working with them, it’s okay, take a step back. Remember you were feeling the way this person in front of you was feeling not two years ago.

And you were having all of these same problems. Like what did you do to get out of that? And then just giving that same advice. And this is also how you network, so like people ask me, oh how do I network? You network by volunteering your time and helping other people like, use your skillset to help others.

And the second question, can you repeat it for me, Sean?

Sean C. Davis: Yeah. So what would you what advice would you give to a developer to to [00:47:00] spend their time to convince them, to spend their time giving back whether it’s to to actual like tech communities or also to their physical human communities that, where they live sure.

Kelly More: There are two places where I usually go to look for volunteer roles and that is the climate action.tech. Workspace and still work on climate slack workspace. So they’re both for climate tech related companies. And I just go in there, I’m like, Hey this is my, these are my skills looking to, to volunteer who needs help and then from there I figure out like what, where I can add the most value.

So that’s the route I took like anyone listening can take that route as well. That I personally love volunteering on climate tech companies that I learn a lot being around that. But there are other ways, right? That you can volunteer for the think of a [00:48:00] product, think of a library or a product that you love.

And see if they have an open source project that needs help. And the one that I did a long time ago was brave. So they needed help translating tech documentation. So I just did that Portuguese in terms of locally that’s a tough one, cuz I’m pretty I live like in cyber space I barely go outside.

Yeah, that’s tough. Sorry,

Sean C. Davis: I guess you, in a way you did that with your with your dentist, you just think, yeah. Good. You she paid me now. I dunno if that’s voluntary. Oh, okay. Yeah. I guess not, but I suppose you could do something like that, but yeah.

That’s fair. And I think I, I also meant that That it’s not necessarily just like you, you did talk about a library or a product you love, but before that talking about the climate action tech that it’s a cause you believe in, or somebody who’s doing something well and you want to give your time to help them.

So maybe not [00:49:00] necessarily something that benefits you, but being able to use your skills to, to do that, to, to help. Cause you believe in, I feel like that’s really it’s powerful. And I tie that also to the, that you could pull a, be the answer that you had given to the previous question that you can actually get the benefit of networking and expanding your network as a result of volunteering, which is that’s a.

Can’t really put a price on that, that can come in in handy into an invaluable amount in the future. Exactly. All right. I have three more. Let’s I have to, but I feel like I, I have to ask them you know what, here I’ll shrink it down to two. Although the first one is I only thought I was gonna ask it one time and then it’s been so interesting.

So I’ve, I just keep asking it and it’s a four parter, so I’ll, , I’ll help guide you through this. Okay. Four parter. So scenario is you can take anyone to [00:50:00] lunch living or not living, and the questions are who would it be? Where would you take them? What would you order? And what topic would you discuss first?

Kelly More: Probably like Friedman. Do you know, that is,

Sean C. Davis: don’t think so. He’s

Kelly More: a, he is an AI researcher and he has a podcast as well. He’s interesting. I would take him out to lunch. Where would we go? I don’t know. Probably some, probably the, a Russian steakhouse in Texas. That’s where he lives and he’s Russian.

What would we talk about? Oh what would we order? Okay. So I don’t think he eats anything else except meat. So he would like, he would probably order he would get steak, some kind of animal. Yeah. And then I would order a salad because I’m being a vegetarian. And then what would we talk about?

We would talk about AI related topics like CVN and N.

Sean C. Davis: Amazing you had that. You had that ready to go, that

Kelly More: you can, [00:51:00] I on, I have a that’s my celebrity crush.

Sean C. Davis: So like I didn’t. Oh, okay. All right. So you’re like, you’re ready to pull the trigger on this. Whenever it happens. You’re ready to go.

You’ve got a ticket book to Texas. We’re going to a Russian steakhouse. This is good. Okay. All last last question of the day. And my second favorite question of every show is what is the worst mistake that you have made as a, I usually say as a developer, but as a developer evangelist data scientist, all the things you’ve done what’s the worst mistake you’ve made in your career so far?

Kelly More: Do you want like a technical answer or just a general

Sean C. Davis: or a, it doesn’t have to be whatev whatever feels right.

Kelly More: So I, I think the technical answer would be it sums up. To rushing too much. So for example submitting a PR and requesting a review for it before you actually write the description of what this PR does and like what problem solving in the code base especially like when the person that you requested the [00:52:00] review for is like super fast and is the CTO, and he’s gonna be like, why can you add a description on here?

Yeah, I’m in the process of adding it. I just requested you to review first, which is not the right word that you’re supposed to do. and then and then also not Q weighing my own PRS in terms of the stakeholders that it affects. So for example, if I am making a change on a certain page to include a table of contents library.

And I know that this page is very valued by the marketing department because like the company just gets a lot of traffic and a lot of valuable users from it. If I add this library, like how is that gonna affect page feed optimization? Like probably really bad. So can maybe I need to have a conversation with the marketing department.

Hey, yeah, it’s cool that you wanna add this table of contents because it might help with [00:53:00] SEO in terms of the H ones, H twos H threes, but it’s gonna, excuse me, it might like there’s a trade off and the paid speed optimization for it. So what do you wanna prioritize? What do you think is better, like before just doing it and then them maybe changing their minds or maybe just having that complaint.

Hey this is taking too slow. Why is it taking too slow and me already knowing why, just just making sure you’re Q weighing for things like that for individual stakeholders internally, and then for a non-technical answer would be I made the mistake up until recently of not valuing my experience.

Pretech so for example I was a bank manager while I was a university a branch manager out at bank while I was a university. And when I first started that job, I sucked, like I had employees quitting, left, and right. I was I was not a very good manager or a [00:54:00] leader. And that’s really expensive, when your employees quit, because one, you have to spend money on. Recruiting other people, putting it up on, on LinkedIn or indeed or wherever it is that you are showcasing the job description and then two you’re you have to pay for overtime for yourself and for other employees because you’re missing a person.

And then also it’s a waste of it’s a waste of time because now you have to spend all this time onboarding a new person. And I was totally ignoring like all these skills. And the way I got better at that was I had a mentor way back when, and he said he just fed me one sentence. He said when you’re a manager your employees do not work for you.

You work for them. So that means you need to make sure that they have all the resources they need to make sure they’re doing a good job. You need to treat them the way that they specifically. Want to be treated. So for [00:55:00] example you might have an employee that’s really ambitious, so right then and there you’re gonna think, okay, this person’s probably gonna get bored after three months.

So I’m gonna need to feed them additional projects, to, to keep them like, excited about the job. And maybe you have an, another employee that, that is very introverted and he, or she may not wanna come to you with the blockers that they’re experiencing. You need to make sure that you are creating an environment that, where they feel safe enough to feed you that information.

Or let’s say you have a, another employee that has COVID that week and that there’s a deadline coming. is that employee gonna, complete that deadline while they have, COVID probably not. So maybe you wanna push the deadline or give it to another member of your staff. So things like that, just like keeping that sentence in mind your employees network for you, you work for them, like it’s like an MBA and management and under three minutes

Sean C. Davis: yes, I, yeah.[00:56:00]

I love that. That’s and I, there’s something really powerful in that idea of that. Just because you weren’t working in tech before doesn’t mean that you weren’t working toward what you are or weren’t building skills that you can still use today, for

Kelly More: sure. Yeah.

Sean C. Davis: Love that. Also love the, not queuing your own PRS.

I feel like there’s yeah, I think a lot about one, one of the most valuable skills that I think I’ve built over my career in. In the coding space has been well, really it’s just a it, I’m thinking about it specific to code, but might not be, is having, being mindful enough of everything that you’re doing and having an answer for questions.

And so it doesn’t, , it doesn’t necessarily mean slowing down and, moving it at snails pace so that you have to consider every little thing and it’s gonna take a year to get a PR through, but it also [00:57:00] doesn’t mean. moving so fast that you’re distracted and not thinking about all the pieces.

And so I feel like I’m improving on this all the time, cuz I, I feel like we get stronger whenever anybody is asking a question about our work or we make a mistake here and we’re like, oh, I didn’t consider that. Or I don’t have an answer for you. I have to go do that. It’s okay, next time I’m gonna make sure I have an answer for that thing.

Yeah. I don’t know. I love that. Love

Kelly More: that, Matt Greenberg, the CTO of Reforge he, I asked him once. When I, while I was still working at career com I did an interview with him and I asked him what is what’s the biggest difference that you see between an associate level engineer and a senior level engineer.

And he said empathy. So like just working with empathy.

Sean C. Davis: Yeah. Yeah totally great answer. Great answer. Okay. That is that’s if for today. Thank you so much, Kelly. This was so much fun. [00:58:00]

Kelly More: Thanks for having me. I had fun as well.

Sean C. Davis: All right. Now, before we go why don’t you, I guess you can take a minute to tell listeners and viewers how to get in touch with you and go ahead and feel free to plug anything that you’re working on right

Kelly More: now.

Oh, sure. I’m most active on LinkedIn, so it’s, it’ll be like slash and slash Kelly Moore and on Twitter, it’s at miss MIS SS Kelly Moore. This is the, like the only two that I use. I think

Sean C. Davis: right. Okay. That’s it for this show. Thank you all for listening, watching. Thank you for your support.

We will be back in two weeks. Live on June 16th with SU Charlow of Redis. So from all of us@cfe.dev, thank you for joining us for this show. We’ll see you next time.